I got a present shortly before Christmas. From Germany. It was a beautiful Oscar Wilde calendar. Not from the man himself, of course, but from a friend of mine, Jorg Rademacher. I first met Jorg nearly twenty years ago when he helped organise some readings for me in Germany. He’s a very tall, very courteous […]
January, 2015
YOU CANNOT BE SERIOUS!! by Harry McAvinchy
I’m having a John McEnroe moment . You might remember the tennis player’s exasperated outcry at Wimbleton all those years ago. He was a “punk” tennis player back then …a Young Turk of Tennis, prone to explosions of ire and fury….Very, very entertaining amid the strawberries and cream decorum and all that blazered gentility. […]
Abortion: the archbishop and the minister
Because I have the disadvantage of being a man, I can’t have children…Well no, I can and I have – four of them – but not in the way a woman has children. The experience of having another human being growing inside you must remain something of a mystery to me and other men. […]
IS THE PEN MIGHTIER THAN THE SWORD ? by Harry McAvinchey
The old nursery rhyme went : “Sticks and stones can break my bones but words can never harm me”. Is the pen mightier than the sword? Well , let’s face it , in a physical confrontatation , the fellow with the sword would easily dominate. In real terms, though, anyone with a modicum of motor […]
Easter 1916: they shouldn’t have bothered
There’s an article in the Irish Times this morning titled ‘1916 centenary a time for reflection not celebration’. I think that’s a reasonable proposition, so I pushed my marmalade to one side and had a closer read. It’s by a man called Dennis Kennedy and from the first paragraph he inches towards his central […]
RADIO DAYS by Harry McAvinchey
The radio is chirruping merrily in the background as the snow flurries and chases about outside…The world might end sometime soon ….. I see Mitchel McLaughlin has been appointed Speaker at Stormont.A Sinn Feiner in the speaker’s job…worlds might crumble. Jim Allister has just now discovered the outworkings of one man , one vote […]
Those OTR letters: remind me what was in them?
It was instructive to read some of the press articles about how Tony Blair was going to face a grilling at the hands of that Westminster committee looking into those on-the-run letters. He’d pleaded Middle East business, he’d rung up old pals and asked if he really really had to appear, but long runs the […]
The Principle thing…
Will I tell you the kind of person I admire? Someone who believes something is wrong and who refuses to back down until it’s righted. Myself, I don’t think I have the staying power – I’d get fed up with the emotional effort of fighting the good fight. In fact I suspect the Irish […]
JE SUIS CHARLIE by Harry McAvinchey
There are millions marching on the streets of Paris and all across the country. They are showing a solidarity with the journalists and cartoonists murdered at the offices of a satirical magazine. In France , people are allowed to freely express any opinion and there is a freedom to say what is on your […]
On accepting the authorised version
It’s odd the way we react to events. President John F Kennedy was assassinated over fifty years ago and we say what a nasty creature Lee Harvey Oswald was. “He got what was coming to him!” was the response at the time to the news that Jack Ruby had shot Oswald dead. Thirteen people were […]